EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP STYLES ON JOB SATISFACTION OF BASIC SCHOOL TEACHERS AT THE SAGNARIGU MUNICIPALITY IN THE NORTHERN REGION OF GHANA.

Abstract

The leadership styles adopted by school administrators are among many variables that impact teachers' productivity and work satisfaction in educational settings. Schools with authoritarian leaders demotivate teachers and create unhappy employees, whereas schools with democratic and transformative leaders encourage creativity and innovation and increase employee satisfaction. Therefore, this study looked at how leadership style affected the job satisfaction of elementary school teachers in Sagnarigu Municipality. Four assumptions served as the foundation for the cross-sectional design used in the study. A convenient sampling strategy was employed to select 68 headteachers to complete a questionnaire for the study. Out of 650 teachers, Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) formula was employed to randomly select 242 teachers to complete a five-item Likert scale questionnaire for the survey. Using Cronbach's alpha formula, the questionnaire items' internal consistency (reliability coefficient) was verified. Victor's leadership styles scale, which had five items, had an alpha of r=0.741, while the Teachers' Job Satisfaction Scale (TJSS) had an alpha of r=0.670. The study found that a democratic leadership style was the most frequently employed in managing the schools, while autocratic leadership was the least used. It was further revealed that teachers were generally dissatisfied with their jobs. The study also discovered that the democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire leadership styles have no statistically significant effect on teachers' job satisfaction. However, the transformational leadership style correlated with the teachers' job satisfaction. The study recommends capacity building for primary school heads, blending the leadership styles in managing the schools, increasing salaries for teachers to boost their morale for high productivity, and further research to unravel why teachers were dissatisfied with their jobs.